Cooperatives

Interview with Dario Azzellini

Founded in 1973, (yes, that’s 45 years ago!) the Park Slope Food Coop is one of the oldest and largest consumer food coops in the country. It’s a presence in our lives, the source of our food, and a center for community engagement. And it’s also part of a larger coop movement that stretches back in time and exists in many parts of the world.

Over the past 135 years, in all kinds of historical situations and during various political and economic crises and in different political systems, workers have taken control of their workplaces. Yet this story of workers self-administered production is rarely told. Capitalists, bourgeois governments and administrators of systems based on the exploitation of workers usually have little interest in disseminating the history of self-organized workers; those who have successfully run factories without bosses.